Internet congestion is known. As Internet usage continues to increase, Internet service providers (ISPs) have experienced difficulties providing enough bandwidth to maintain acceptable levels of throughput for all users on a continual basis. One obvious solution is for the ISPs to add infrastructure to increase capacity. However, such infrastructure can be expensive, and rapid growth to keep pace with demand often leads to instability. Furthermore, even if/when an ISP manages to provide sufficient bandwidth most of the time, it may be difficult to do so during peak usage times.
When an ISP experiences excess demand for bandwidth, the simplest approach is to provide less than the demand. The decision regarding how and/or to whom to deny bandwidth can be either arbitrary or based on a variety of factors including, for example, user profiles, the amount requested, bandwidth quality, physical/logical topologies, etc.
Another approach is to actively seek to reduce the demand by implementing an external optimization platform (EOP). An EOP optimizes resource usage for a given Internet service. An EOP may use a variety of methods to optimize the video traffic, for example, transcoding and/or transrating. Transcoding includes reformatting the media content to be downloaded via the network to a different, presumably more efficient encoding technique that requires less bandwidth. For example, a media file identified as being in MPEG2 format may be converted to H264 format which requires less bandwidth for transmission while maintaining more or less the same quality.
“Transrating” entails reducing the total media content bit rate by either manipulating the frame rate, and/or reducing the number of frames without changing the encoding technique. Transrating thus effectively reduces the quality of the media stream. However as with transcoding, the extent to which it is used determines whether the reduction in quality is acceptable and/or even perceived by the end user.
In a typical EOP implementation, when Internet users attempt to open a session with an Internet service, the session is terminated by an EOP proxy server. For each intercepted Internet session, the proxy server opens a second session opposite an EOP. If the EOP recognizes the session's content as the type of data which it can optimize, then it in turn opens a session opposite the originally intended server and optimizes the received content before forwarding it to the user via the proxy server. If the EOP doesn't recognize the content, the EOP proxy server then opens a session opposite the originally intended server.
FIG. 1, to which reference is now made, illustrates an exemplary implementation 50 of a typical video traffic EOP 25. User PCs 5 attempt to connect with remote application servers (RAS) 30 via Internet 10. However, EOP proxy server 20 intercepts the connection attempts before they can continue to servers 30. Accordingly, PCs 5 do not connect directly with servers 30. Instead, the associated Internet sessions (arrows 8) are terminated by proxy server 20. Proxy server 20 then initiates a new session (arrows 40) with EOP 25 on behalf of each terminated session.
In the embodiment of FIG. 1, each PC 5 attempts to connect to a remote application server 30. PC 5A attempts to connect with video server 30A; PC 5B attempts to connect with email server 30B; and PC 5C attempts to connect with IM server 30C. EOP 25 is configured to optimize video sessions. Accordingly, when EOP proxy initiates a session with EOP 25 on behalf of PC 5A, EOP 25 recognizes the data as “relevant”, i.e. “video traffic” and interacts with video server 30A to optimize the resulting data session.
EOP 25 cannot process all the incoming session data from EOP proxy server 20. For example, as per the embodiment of FIG. 1, PC 5B is attempting to connect with email server 30B and PC 5C is attempting to connect with IM server 30C. Accordingly, the sessions (arrows 40 B and C) initiated by proxy server 20 on their behalf do not contain video traffic, and EOP 25 will indicate to EOP proxy server 20 that it will not process their data. After receiving such indication, EOP proxy server will initiate new sessions opposite servers 30B and C as per the original addressing provided by PCs 5 B and C respectively.
Another typical implementation of an EOP based solution replaces EOP proxy server 20 with a traffic steering utility comprising deep packet inspection (DPI) functionality. The utility uses the DPI functionality to inspect packets from PCs 5 as they connect directly with servers 30. When session data is identified as being relevant to an EOP 25, the traffic steering utility diverts the session to the relevant EOP 25 instead of to the originally addressed server 30.